The lurid and hellish cover art is very Swedeath, old school to the bone and hinted immediately at the onslaught this debut was about to inflict on my auditory canals. Any band that has an Autopsy song as a band name is sure to have that bands influences and this German act does just that but add colossal amounts of Swedeath and Findeath (yes I made that tag up) as well. The monstrous vocalisations are purist death metal, no gurgling just ultra low stomach barfing barks delivered with good clarity on the opening tune” Unearthly Evocation”. Whether Slaughterday offer anything new is down to your affection for old school death metal and whether you actually want a variation on a tried and trusted formula. As with this decade and the last one this planet has plenty of fans wanting that old buzzsaw guitar sound and I for one never tire of it. Granted the opener and the title track that follows could be lifted from the debuts of both Entombed and Dismember, but when you get such tremendous riffs that doesn’t matter one damn jot.
Above and beyond the old school dirt ridden grime of death metal these Germans sit comfortably wallowing in their version of this filth as “Cosmic Horror” chainsaws you in half with a rather guttural riff and barked vocal vomiting that you can actually understand if you wanted to. “Cult Of The Dreaming Dead” is prime Dismember and also has some rather excellent lead work, a feature of virtually all of the songs on “Nightmare Vortex”, not resting on high speed widdle they are well thought out and played supremely. As with a lot of this style of deathliness there are occasional doom death passages and even the odd relatively serene quiet piece creating good atmosphere and deviation. Closing tune “Cryptic Desolation” is a brute, with a bludgeoning double kick and massive drops in pace to those doom-death sections I mentioned. Any death metal fan thirsting for this style of Swedeath or rumbling rancidness of Autopsy is certain to like this as Slaughterday keep it simple and keep it as brutal as you’re ever going to get.
(7.5/10 Martin Harris)
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